Who Yeardley Love Really Was

Love with her family: middle and top right, with older sister Lexie; bottom right, with her dog, Bandit; and at left, in eighth grade, with her mother, Sharon.

Love with her family: middle and top right, with older sister Lexie; bottom right, with her dog, Bandit; and at left, in eighth grade, with her mother, Sharon.

*Update: A Virginia judge sentenced George Huguely to 23 years in prison for Yeardley Love's murder on August 30, 2012.

Most people remember Yeardley Love as the victim of a tragedy—the face of dating violence in one of the highest-profile cases of the year. But of course she was so much more, her family and friends tell Glamour: a warm and funny sister and friend who was holding a lacrosse stick by the age of five and always dreamed of playing at UVA. "It is no coincidence that her last name was Love," says her friend Molly Millard, "because that is exactly what she embodied." Her aunt Debbie McChesney told Glamour this story: "The last time Yards was home visiting her mother, she stopped to help an elderly man who had driven off the road and was hurt. She called 911, then his wife, and sat with him to make sure the ambulance came. This was the kind of thing she was always doing." The family has set up the One Love Foundation, which will grant scholarships and awards to "bring out the Yeardley" in everyone (go to joinonelove.org to learn more).